First of all, I’d like to thank you. Even by doing something as small as reading a blog post, you’re participating in transformation, and I so appreciate being able to play a small role in your life and challenge you to new ways of thinking, such as…
Dark and light are essential partners in existence.
Ever since I was young, I was fascinated with the symbol of Yin and Yang. I saw that light and dark, good and bad; they’re all part of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. But when I observed the world of human relations, I was curious: if one cannot exist without the other, why are they always in conflict with each other, against one another, at war with each other over judgments of good and evil, causing so much pain and suffering?
I always felt that something was not quite right with this picture, and wondered, “What if we’re missing something?” Then a wise man told me that the positive and the negative are only against each other in the third dimension.
In higher dimensions, the positive and negative actually complement each other — in fact, they dance together in perfect harmony!
When I heard this, my heart started to weep, and tears of joy and truth poured down my face. I felt so relieved — like, “Yes! This is it!” If we would just allow the good and the bad to complement each other, this would put an end to pain and suffering.
Because as natural as it is to resist suffering and pain, it just leads to more suffering and pain. If we could just surrender to pain and suffering and stopped judging it as good or bad, we would finally find peace.
Suffering isn’t “good” or “bad”. It’s both. It simply is.
I’m 57 years old now, and I would say that 80% of my life has been pain and suffering. I think I started to suffer in the womb, feeling my mother’s pain and suffering. And no, I don’t believe that I’m paying for my sins or having a karmic experience. I’ve let go of that old-fashioned way of thinking, that dark ages way of thinking, long ago.
Looking back at my life now, I can see that it was only in times of hardship that I was growing, I was learning something, I was evolving.
In moments of joy and happiness, I was enjoying the fruits of my growth. If I placed myself in a space of nirvana, pretty soon I wouldn’t even know what nirvana is. You need contrast to know the difference between joy and suffering.
When you’re happy and joyful, there’s no need to change. After all, why change if everything is good? You can only grow when you’re uncomfortable, because change is necessary.
Love-hate, emptiness-fulfillment, peace-war, illness-health, fortunate-unfortunate are all opposite sides of the same coin.
Understanding the dynamics of contrast and dual reality brings harmony. And it’s incredibly encouraging! Because you can know with certainty that if you’re currently in a difficult times, nothing has gone wrong!
You’re in a phase, a totally normal, natural phase that’s going to pass. If you stop resisting what is and allow yourself to feel the pain, you will not suffer. The phase of pain and difficulty will pass through your life with greater ease. So enjoy, and be grateful for those moments.
You may already know that we are all part of a greater oneness, part of a collective consciousness, and as much as you affect the collective consciousness you are affected by the collective consciousness.
This does not mean that everything feels great all the time, or that feeling connected on a cosmic level is always comfortable.
Believe me, I have moments when I don’t want to experience oneness with everything. But it’s inescapable.
“What about free will?” you might ask. That’s actually a great example of contrast. You have a free will, but you are also a reflection of a cosmic will. You are a vehicle through which cosmic will and cosmic intelligence expresses itself. That’s why you don’t always get what you want, because you’re part of a greater plan. Sound confusing? It always will, as long as you try to understand it with logic, so don’t even try to logically figure it out or make sense of it.
The truth is, our level of consciousness is still in the dark ages.
We are just barely coming out of it. We gave it a good shot with positive thinking, which was and is popular with many spiritual teachers, but you see, behind every positive thought there is a negative thought. So in fact, positive thinking is not really possible. And when we try to deny or resist negative thinking, we simply exacerbate the problem, because what you resist persists.
Nothing is really divided — as you can see in the symbol of Yin and Yang, the line between the positive and negative sides is not straight, it’s curvy, fluctuating between light and dark. Sometimes we’re more on one side, sometimes we’re more on the other. Are you getting the picture?
The answer to anything is never yes or no, black or white. Most of the time it’s both, and sometimes it’s neither. It simply is.
We exist in a huge matrix of cause and effect relationships over which we have little control, and which sometimes cause things to turn out in ways we don’t like. Cause and effect result from the fact that there are many forces in the world — other people, the weather, earthquakes, the Sun, your spouse, your parents, religion, political systems, etc. — that we have little or no control over. In the face of this apparent powerlessness, how can you respond?
The way not to suffer, or to suffer less, is to surrender to oneness.
Many who seek spiritual awareness mistakenly think that awakening is a way of eliminating the negative. But this is in itself a contradiction! We are supposed to be positive about everything … except negativity, which we supposedly should be negative about to the point of eliminating it.
Since I’ve been fascinated by this subject all of my painful life, I’ve done a lot of reading and researching on this topic. I came across a very old text, which reads,
“The basis of this occult approach to life, the foundation of everyday practice of a person who lives the life of obedience to esoteric law, is the reversal of the more usual ways of thinking, speaking and doing. Hence Jacob Boehme said that the great secret is “to walk in all things contrary to the world”. Silent, unostentatious reversal of one’s own way of life, combined with perfect tolerance of the ways of other people, is the method of the practical occultist. In what, then, does the reversal consist? Primarily, in a reversal of thought, in a point of view which is just the opposite to that accepted by most persons
One need only look about himself that most people are sick , that most people are in trouble, most people cannot get along with themselves or the world.
Does it not become evident, then, that most people are in trouble because they have somehow put the cart before the horse in their practice of life? In this scientific age we know that everything is an expression of the working of the law of cause and effect. Is it not plain, therefore, that the miseries afflicting most people are the result of their negative use of the law?
For every moment of human life in some special application of the law, and the outcome depends wholly on whether the application be positive or negative. In order to go through life, we need more than just “our” personal energies to carry us through. In order to have courage and persistence in spite of seeming disappointments and difficulties, we must know ourselves to be vehicles of a power for which there can be an insurmountable obstacle.
“My will” is an illusive personal thing which is but the reflection or mask of “thy will”, which is the purpose or motive of the cosmic life. A will absolutely free, and certain to be realized.
This doesn’t imply that the universal will visits affliction, disease, and poverty upon us. It does not mean that we must be resigned to our troubles like dumb beasts, making no complaint when we are bitten.
It means that, in spite of appearances, the cosmic will works always towards the good. That the universal will to do good cannot possibly be defeated. It means that personality is known for what it is, a partial expression of us all, and that in consequence, our personal notions of what is best for us may often be mistaken. Our notions of the ways in which good is coming to us frequently fall short of adequate anticipations of the blessings ahead.
Thus, as long as we continue to make false interpretations, the inexorable laws of the cosmos work out those interpretations in pain-bringing forms. But this pain is friendly, because it is educational.
Suffering, poverty, disease, disharmony, and death all have their lessons for us.
These are the goals that prod the race onward in its search for truth. We don’t fully understand why this is the method, but we can see that the very fact of manifested existence necessitates temporary limitations, with suffering as an inevitable consequence of such limitations.
You don’t need to be a philosopher to know that civilization is the result of human reactions against pain, the consequence of the human quest to overcome limitation. Disease teaches us the laws of health, friction in human relationships goads us in the discovery of the secret of harmony, and the wise declare that in the mystery of death lies the hidden secret of immortality. But the best evidence of these laws being right is the world’s ridicule. For the world is sick unto death, writhing with pain, hag-ridden by war, pestilence, and famine. But the wise have found the way of health, happiness, and peace.”
I’m trying to describe life and the human condition in a way that might be new and different to you, hopefully expanding your perspective.
If it sounds unusual or strange, that’s fine. Adapting to this way of thinking takes time, and it’s not always easy, but it’s definitely given me more peace.
I don’t take life so personally anymore. Sure, I still get angry. I cry, I swear, and I allow myself to feel frustration and all the negative emotions, but I’m able to release them more quickly. More and more often, I’m in a state that Buddhists call equanimity.
And the more I live by these laws, the more I become an observer of my life and an observer of life in general with less judgment and less suffering. It’s my deepest wish that you can experience this too.
With love and light,
Beata